Jewish Town of Lodz Dying: 70 Per Cent. of Jewish Population Said to Be Dependent on Charity

The Jewish town of Lodz is dying, the “Najer Hajnt” here writes. That great factory town which grew up with American rapidity, is now the classic centre of Jewish poverty and distress, it says. There is no place in Poland, or probably anywhere else where want is so blatant as in Lodz.

For the most part, it proceeds, the suferers are people who have hitherto been earning a more or less comfortable living and never imagined that they would have to stretch out their hands as beggars. There are to-day tens of thousands of Jews in Lodz who are dependent for their crust of bread on what others give them. The relief figures of the Jewish Community of Lodz show that over 38 per cent. of all the Jews in Lodz are now drawing the dole from the Jewish Community.

The total Jewish population of Lodz is 180,000 (40,000 families). 21,744 families pay their dues to the Community. Of the rest 15,488 families, numbering 69,696 souls, are in receipt of aid from the Community. This works out at about 39 per cent. of all the Jews in Lodz.

In addition to the Jewish Community, the report goes on, there are many Jewish relief organisations in Lodz which are engaged in allocating relief funds to thousands of Jews. There is the Jewish Rescue Committee; there are scores of philanthropic societies, and if all those Jews who are receiving relief from all these sources are added to those on the books of the Jewish Community, the report says, we arrive at the staggering conclusion that 70 per cent. of the Jews in Lodz are dependent on charity in order to live.

Of the rest, the “Hajnt” proceeds, there are thousands of Jewish workers, artisans, shopkeepers and small traders who are still managing to live without having to apply for charity, but their standard of life has been reduced to little above the starvation level. The Jewish Rescue Committee in Lodz, it says, has called a conference of press representatives to urge them to alarm public opinion with regard to the catastrophic position of the Jews of Lodz, and to call for a mobilisation of all the forces of Polish Jewry to save them from annihilation. The Jewish Rescue Committee in Lodz, it is pointed out, gave assistance during the past five years by means of loans to 22,000 families, to an amount of about 4½ million zlotys. Now its funds are running out. The Joint Distribution Committee has completely stopped its subsidy, and the Jewish population of the city is no longer able to support it with contributions. During the last seven months the contributions have fallen alarmingly. During the whole of the seven months only 7,000 zlotys came in as membership fees, as compared with over 60,000 zlotys in 1927. At the same time, those Jews who hold loans from the Rescue Committee are unable to repay them and where in former years the loans were always repaid promptly, now they fall due without any expectation of repayment. The money is simply not there. It is no exaggeration, the paper concludes, to say that Lodz Jewry is literally being wiped off the map.